Service Employees International Union

Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers throughout Southern California have voted overwhelmingly to quit the giant Service Employees International Union and join a smaller rival union. The National Labor Relations Board, which tallied secret ballots cast earlier this month, said Tuesday that about 2,000 nurses and healthcare professionals voted more than 6 to 1 in favor of ditching the SEIU. They are affiliating with rival National Union of Healthcare Workers, a breakaway faction. The defeat is a major setback for SEIU, the largest hospital and healthcare workers union in California, with about 150,000 members.

The former president of the union that represents Los Angeles County government workers has agreed to plead guilty to federal fraud and tax charges in connection with an alleged scheme to collect illicit consulting payments from a labor-related nonprofit, officials said Thursday. Alejandro Stephens, a longtime leader of the Service Employees International Union local, signed an agreement to plead guilty to one count of filing a false income tax return and two counts of mail fraud, the U.S. attorney's office said.

The leaders of an Oakland union were removed from office Tuesday by their Washington bosses, the culmination of months of fighting over who will represent tens of thousands of home health aides. The Service Employees International Union served the officers of the 150,000-member United Healthcare Workers West with a trusteeship notice Tuesday afternoon. It appointed its executive vice presidents, Eliseo Medina and Dave Regan, as trustees.

They led the most powerful forces in healthcare -- the trade groups representing doctors, insurance companies, hospitals and drug makers. Any one of them could stall, if not derail, President Obama's hopes of overhauling the U.S. healthcare system. Instead, they stood with Obama before TV cameras at the White House and pledged their cooperation. For Obama, the show of unity gave momentum to perhaps his most ambitious domestic goal.

For years, the powerful Service Employees International Union has played a lead role in the campaign for a landmark federal law that would allow workers to join a labor organization simply by signing petitions. Now, as part of a high-stakes battle in California, the union is urging federal officials to throw out petitions signed by tens of thousands of its own members who have asked to be represented by a rival upstart group. The David-vs.

Nearly one-fourth of Los Angeles County's social workers, who oversee the safety of abused and neglected children, called in sick Thursday to dramatize their complaints that they are underpaid and overburdened by high caseloads and excessive paperwork. At least 622 of the county's 2,757 social workers and their immediate supervisors did not report for work, according to administrators in the Department of Children and Family Services. The no-show rate of 22.

Officials in the governor's office say a politically powerful union may have had inappropriate influence over the Obama administration's decision to withhold billions of dollars in federal stimulus money from California if the state does not reverse a scheduled wage cut for the labor group's workers.

In the 1960s and '70s, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange picketed with farmworkers and marched with Cesar Chavez, even serving jail time for the cause. In the 1980s, the Catholic nuns rallied behind janitors trying to unionize. Long known as friends to labor, today the sisters are on the other side of the picket line, locked in a clash with a union that wants to organize at a chain of hospitals the nuns operate throughout California.

A new Oakland-based union -- the product of a brutal fight between the elected leaders of healthcare workers in Northern California and their superiors in Washington -- announced Tuesday that it had gained its first members. North American Healthcare agreed to recognize the National Union of Healthcare Workers as the representative of more than 350 nursing home workers at four of the company's facilities in Northern California, the union said.

Representatives of laundry and garment workers said they would vote today on whether to withdraw from their union, Unite Here, with an eye toward establishing formal ties with the Service Employees International Union. But Unite Here's majority leadership said the union's constitution prohibits affiliates from deciding on their own to secede.

Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers throughout Southern California have voted overwhelmingly to quit the giant Service Employees International Union and join a smaller rival union. The National Labor Relations Board, which tallied secret ballots cast earlier this month, said Tuesday that about 2,000 nurses and healthcare professionals voted more than 6 to 1 in favor of ditching the SEIU. They are affiliating with rival National Union of Healthcare Workers, a breakaway faction. The defeat is a major setback for SEIU, the largest hospital and healthcare workers union in California, with about 150,000 members.

An upstart union challenging the giant Service Employees International Union won a plurality Friday in a disputed and closely watched union vote at a Sonoma County Hospital. But the National Labor Relations Board, which oversaw the vote at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, said it could not declare a winner because the final margin was close and 17 ballots were challenged. "At this point, we don't have a determinative result," said Tim Peck, assistant to the regional director of the National Labor Relations Board.

Hundreds of workers at a Sonoma County hospital are scheduled to go to the polls today in a bitter and closely watched union vote pitting the giant Service Employees International against an upstart rival. The balloting at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital has drawn intense scrutiny in labor circles nationwide because of the nasty underlying conflict between the SEIU and its breakaway competitor, the National Union of Healthcare Workers. The NUHW doesn't yet have a single dues-paying member but is waging a David versus Goliath campaign against the behemoth SEIU, which boasts more than 2 million members nationwide, almost half in the healthcare sector.

A federal labor board decision this week has given a major victory to a breakaway union vying with the giant Service Employees International Union to represent tens of thousands of California healthcare workers. On Tuesday, the National Labor Relations Board called for elections to determine who has the right to represent some 2,300 Kaiser healthcare workers employed at various sites in Southern California. An SEIU affiliate currently represents the workers, but the breakaway group filed a petition in February challenging the SEIU.

About 20,000 Los Angeles school district workers have agreed to four unpaid furlough days to help close a large budget gap, officials announced Monday. Two units of Service Employees International Union Local 99 representing cafeteria workers, bus drivers and other employees approved the measure last week by a combined vote of 953 to 234, said Blanca Gallegos, a union spokeswoman. The members will take one furlough day per month from February through May. The move will save about $7.7 million, according to union officials.

California Democratic Party Chairman John Burton says one of the state's most politically powerful unions has threatened to cut off funding for the party over his support for a group that has broken away from the labor organization. The rift could drive a wedge between the party and one of its most generous donors. The state council of the Service Employees International Union has directed $700,000 to the Democratic Party since 2007 and millions more to Democratic candidates and causes.

The union contract for 55,000 county workers expired late Wednesday after negotiators failed to come to terms on healthcare benefits. The workers, represented by the Service Employees International Union, Local 721, negotiated with county officials through the night Wednesday at the L.A. Convention Center but broke off discussions at 6 a.m. Thursday with an agreement to renew talks today. Both sides expect to avert a strike. "We're still working on a few issues," said county Chief Executive William T Fujioka.

Ayear ago, when state legislators proposed a $9.8-billion water bond, United Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez applauded: "We are very excited about that because we want to see a viable agricultural industry throughout the state of California; we want to see farmworkers employed." Last week, Rodriguez created a political committee, bankrolled with $1 million from a national labor coalition, to oppose the very same idea. It's not the interests of farmworkers that have changed; the UFW's about-face appears to have been a clumsy attempt at political blackmail.

The former president of the union that represents Los Angeles County government workers has agreed to plead guilty to federal fraud and tax charges in connection with an alleged scheme to collect illicit consulting payments from a labor-related nonprofit, officials said Thursday. Alejandro Stephens, a longtime leader of the Service Employees International Union local, signed an agreement to plead guilty to one count of filing a false income tax return and two counts of mail fraud, the U.S. attorney's office said.

Re "Right way to organize," Editorial, Aug. 3 I have been a member and steward of a Service Employees International Union local for about 20 years. I agree that the power to unionize should be put in the "hands of the workers." But without some organizational help and funding, it would be next to impossible to overcome the funding, internal advantage and resources of the employer to counter unionization efforts. Unless there is an equitable alternative to "card check," the employees will always be at an inherent disadvantage.